Check Surfaces

[bhyde]

I personally have not had a problem with check surface violation, but serveral people that I work with have. Is there something that I am missing in the check surface definitions?

[cadcam]

Are they defining the check surfcaes before

picking the drive surfaces?

[Kenneth Potter]

Take some practice time to figure out how check surfaces really works. Explore all the tools.

Pre-select your check surfaces from the main menu or from the operation manager. There you can select from an array of options.

Toolpath/surface/drivecheck/on/ Now you can use all the selection methods including grouping.

Play with it. It will come to you

 

Kenneth Potter

[Colin G]

Bill,

Be sure and pick your check surfaces first. The check surfaces are modal, so you should be able to define them and then view them using the show check surfaces command. Be sure that you also turn the toggle box on the toolpath parameters page to "use check surfaces". I personally over look this one quite offen. I have also found it necessary sometimes to put a small value in the stock to leave on check surfaces parameter. .0005 is usually sufficient.

Hope this helps,

Colin Gilchrist

Gilchrist Consulting Services

Custom CNC Programming & Mastercam Instruction

[email protected]

[Christian Raebild]

You should also remember that check surfaces are specific to a single operation, and they have to be included in the surface selection when you create the operation. Also, if you have used a surface as a check surface in one operation, and need to use it as a drive surface in a later operation, then you have to remove the check surface status before you select surfaces for the later operation.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Here's what I do. I pick my surfaces to be machined, I flip the Amount to leave on check surfaces, give it a value. Set all you other parameters, then click OK. It will give you an error. Click ok. Once back in the Operations manager, I select the "Geometry" for the offending operation, Select Check Surfaces, select the surfaces you wish to be Check surfaces. Select Done and Done, then ReGen. Granted this is a clumsy wat to deal with this but I've found that selecting the check surfaces beforhand, designates that check surfaces forever. Perhaps I am doing something wrong but thi has worked for me.

 

JM2C

[Wallace]

1) Select Drive Surfaces (Drive and Check Surfaces)

2) Select Check Surfaces (only Check Surfaces)

3) Give a small value for Amount to leave on check surfaces and drive surfaces (Example: for metric 0,001 mm).

[BernieT]

I'm with James, set everything except the check surfs, say OK, then go into 'Geometry' and pick the check surfs and 'regenerate'.

Seems backward but it's actually easier. Before Ver 8 I rarely used check surfs because they were confusing and I didn't trust them. With Ver 8 and the mighty 'regenerate' command I now use them regularly.

BerTau

[bhyde]

I have been working on this problem for a couple of days and have taken alot of the advice that I have recieved from the forum. Most of the confusion from the people that I work with is the way you have to go about selecting the check surfaces. I think that they have their tolerances set too low in Mcam for rough parallel and that is where the check surface violation is occuring.